To link to the entire object, paste this link in email, IM or documentTo embed the entire object, paste this HTML in websiteTo link to this page, paste this link in email, IM or documentTo embed this page, paste this HTML in website

MARTY LOWERY Abbie Hoffman, leader of the esteemed Youth International party, did not come to Chicago last month just to appear for his convention-disruption trial. The events of the past two weeks show his mission as chief provocateur of the international student conspiracy to be quite evident. The trial was a clever front for his true purpose-the destruction of midwest universities. In a three day period, he convinced student groups to employ the following schemes: •Howie Machtinger, a veteran of the Columbia sit-in and a graduate student at the University of Chicago, was to anonymously approach Ltean D. Gale Johnson of the social sciences division to explain that Marlene Dixon had used obscenities in her classes and was fostering a Marxist revolution to topple the University. Marlene Dixon was chosen as the scapegoat because of her obvious disloyalty to a university that had given her so much. By joining the student demonstration at the inauguration of Edward Levi, she proved to all that she should be dismissed at the earliest convenience of the University. Upon the adminintration's decision to fire Mrs. Dixon, Machtinger was to lock 500 unsuspecting students into the administration building to further the crisis. The tactic was a complete success. •An anonymous student was chosen at the University of Illinois to burn the entire card catalogue of the library, a gesture which would immobilize the learning process for three years, allowing a small contingent of Trotskyites to recruit the majority of frustrated students for the final destruction of Giampaign-Urbana. The recruiting program began this week. •Notre Dame football players were slated to confiscate the most obnoxious stag film available in South Bend to premiere at a student forum on pornography. Then the team captain was to invite Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, President of the University, and various town's people to the showing. This would ruffle Fr. Hesburgh's collar and force him to allow students no more than '15 minutes of meditation to cease and desist.' They desisted but have not ceased. •The Black Student Association of Roosevelt University was chosen to design, register for and teach black studies courses in the same classes and at the same times as other courses were being taught. This would force Dean Lawrence Silverman to expel any black student who was in the same classroom at the same time, to which the black student would reply that he was never enrolled in the first place. Everyone who never entered was expelled, and everyone who was expelled never entered. The same tactic of black studies' demands was to be used at the University of Wisconsin, but with an extra attraction. Another anonymous student was to inform Governor Warren Knowles that the dairy industry of the state would be sabotaged by communist conspirators in the same manner as water was flouridated. He would then undoubtedly call up the National Guard, and a case could be made for militaryindustrial intervention into an ideological struggle. They intervened and are still prowling the campus. What is tragic about these unprecedented developments is that, in the minds of some, if Abbie Hoffman had remained in New York, our universities would have been safe for the teaching of freedom and democracy in the Western tradition. Now the universities are not only in turmoil, but the student conspirators also want AMNESTY for their wanton destruction. The question of amnesty, however, is not as ludicrous as the serious discussion of an international student conspiracy. Nor is it as simple matter as some administrators would treat it. Fr. Hesburgh and Dean Silverman, in the forceful manner of S.I. Hayakawa of San Francisco State University, have expressed a policy of 'expulsion without hesitation.' The argument is simple--any student who has disrupted the normal functioning of a university can no longer be considered a rational being and must be dealt with as a criminal. Legal proceedings are not necessary expulsion is sufficient. VOLUME g, NUMBER 7 a journal of issues and events for depaul university FEBRUARY gi, igea What is rarely discussed, except perhaps in complacent retrospect, is the reason behind the disruption. When the demand of amnesty arises, the situation polarizes and the response is expulsion. But amnesty has nothing to do with a university conceding its entire posture to the demonstrating students or admitting that the destruction of public or private property is acceptable. Amnesty is the admission by an administration that the causes of the demonstration and the subsequent rectification of those problems is more immediately important than retributive justice. Nicholas Von Hoffman, reporting on the University of Wisconsin demonstration for the Washington Post, admits that 'in many instances the revolting students are saying what senior professors have said for a lifetime. Hie difference is that the older men have learned to live with these things while the younger people protest. Instead of resignation, the students march, the National Guard is called out, and the kids are accused of being impolite and The International Student Conspiracy irrational. Perhaps they are. But after 100 years of rational propriety a case can be made for giving higher education a good swift kick in the pants.' Countless reporters are expressing the same sentiment, but many of them agree with the demands while disapproving of the tactics. If higher education does need a kick in the pants then to seek punishment for those who kick first is to sidestep the issue. The demands are many and varied 'student power' is only the catch-phrase for them. What is at the center of all confrontations, though, is the need for student involvement in the total workings of the university and particularly in curriculum changes. It is no longer possible to argue that students attend a university for four years and are therefore incompetent by virtue of inexperience to determine that which directly concerns them for those four years. By the very fact that the questioning of a university's purpose has become so high-keyed and principled, the necessity of a direct student voice in university affairs is obvious. Dean Silverman derogatorily refers to the takeover of classes as an attempt by students to hold 'their own learning experiences.' The implication is that the learning experience is not theirs to hold--and this is the crux of the roblem. The University of Chicago Demands, none of which were granted, included rehiring Marlene Dixon, a greater student voice in the hiring and firing of faculty members and amnesty for all irivolved.Roosevelt University's demands include 30% student representation with full voting rights at all meetings of the academic departments and 15% student representation on the faculty senate to determine school social and academic affairs. What is evolving, therefore, through confrontation rather than dialogue is a return to the original structure of the university as a community of faculty and students totally committed to the learning process. Ideally, even the faculty is a body of 'students,' seeking an exchange of ideas on all levels and from all plitical ideologies. And if, as is the case with Marlene Dixon, a faculty member is 'radical,' advocating an 'active' rather than a 'passive' scholarship, he or she should have no difficulty being assimilated to such an atmosphere. But then money and paperwork enter upon the scene, and an administration is needed. Control is centralized and, with control, power is centralized. The problem begins to develop. In a recent issue of The Maroon of the University of Chicago, editor Roger Black remarked: 'They (Edward I^evi and the disciplinary committee) believe that the University, champion and defender of rational discourse, actually practices it. They believe that force is antithetical to rational discourse, and thus antithetical to the University The people who run the University of Chicago, starting with Edward Levi, are the veterans who managed to stay here during the lean fifties, and in that time they created in their minds the best of all possible Universities. Nat­ urally it was a University run by the faculty, founded on the principles of rational discourse with scholarship and excellence as its goals. And because they stayed, they tend to regard the University as their university, and the principles they labored to implement as the principles which run the Univerit y. Herein lies the area which must be changed--administrative and senior faculty control of all university activities. U. of C. students participating in the sit-in pinpointed the key theoretical issues of all student power demands: 'One function of universities in present day societies is to produce educated people--but not just ANY educated people, educated in some abstractly valid way. Students are intended to develop the skills and specialties and to acquire political and social orientations- -which are useful to the dominant groups, in society. This bias is guaranteed by the way nearly all universities are financed, and safeguarded by the way they are run. Effective power in the university is exercised by a small number of senior faculty, administrators, and powerful student backers. Junior faculty, students, and employees have no real power. This monopoly of power within the university parallels the monopoly of power of the dominant groups in society at large.' If this is an outline of the general issue for students, and if it is at all valid, then it is the beginning of the good, swift kick. To ignore it or quash it is a blatant contradiction for a liberal university.

MARTY LOWERY Abbie Hoffman, leader of the esteemed Youth International party, did not come to Chicago last month just to appear for his convention-disruption trial. The events of the past two weeks show his mission as chief provocateur of the international student conspiracy to be quite evident. The trial was a clever front for his true purpose-the destruction of midwest universities. In a three day period, he convinced student groups to employ the following schemes: •Howie Machtinger, a veteran of the Columbia sit-in and a graduate student at the University of Chicago, was to anonymously approach Ltean D. Gale Johnson of the social sciences division to explain that Marlene Dixon had used obscenities in her classes and was fostering a Marxist revolution to topple the University. Marlene Dixon was chosen as the scapegoat because of her obvious disloyalty to a university that had given her so much. By joining the student demonstration at the inauguration of Edward Levi, she proved to all that she should be dismissed at the earliest convenience of the University. Upon the adminintration's decision to fire Mrs. Dixon, Machtinger was to lock 500 unsuspecting students into the administration building to further the crisis. The tactic was a complete success. •An anonymous student was chosen at the University of Illinois to burn the entire card catalogue of the library, a gesture which would immobilize the learning process for three years, allowing a small contingent of Trotskyites to recruit the majority of frustrated students for the final destruction of Giampaign-Urbana. The recruiting program began this week. •Notre Dame football players were slated to confiscate the most obnoxious stag film available in South Bend to premiere at a student forum on pornography. Then the team captain was to invite Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, President of the University, and various town's people to the showing. This would ruffle Fr. Hesburgh's collar and force him to allow students no more than '15 minutes of meditation to cease and desist.' They desisted but have not ceased. •The Black Student Association of Roosevelt University was chosen to design, register for and teach black studies courses in the same classes and at the same times as other courses were being taught. This would force Dean Lawrence Silverman to expel any black student who was in the same classroom at the same time, to which the black student would reply that he was never enrolled in the first place. Everyone who never entered was expelled, and everyone who was expelled never entered. The same tactic of black studies' demands was to be used at the University of Wisconsin, but with an extra attraction. Another anonymous student was to inform Governor Warren Knowles that the dairy industry of the state would be sabotaged by communist conspirators in the same manner as water was flouridated. He would then undoubtedly call up the National Guard, and a case could be made for militaryindustrial intervention into an ideological struggle. They intervened and are still prowling the campus. What is tragic about these unprecedented developments is that, in the minds of some, if Abbie Hoffman had remained in New York, our universities would have been safe for the teaching of freedom and democracy in the Western tradition. Now the universities are not only in turmoil, but the student conspirators also want AMNESTY for their wanton destruction. The question of amnesty, however, is not as ludicrous as the serious discussion of an international student conspiracy. Nor is it as simple matter as some administrators would treat it. Fr. Hesburgh and Dean Silverman, in the forceful manner of S.I. Hayakawa of San Francisco State University, have expressed a policy of 'expulsion without hesitation.' The argument is simple--any student who has disrupted the normal functioning of a university can no longer be considered a rational being and must be dealt with as a criminal. Legal proceedings are not necessary expulsion is sufficient. VOLUME g, NUMBER 7 a journal of issues and events for depaul university FEBRUARY gi, igea What is rarely discussed, except perhaps in complacent retrospect, is the reason behind the disruption. When the demand of amnesty arises, the situation polarizes and the response is expulsion. But amnesty has nothing to do with a university conceding its entire posture to the demonstrating students or admitting that the destruction of public or private property is acceptable. Amnesty is the admission by an administration that the causes of the demonstration and the subsequent rectification of those problems is more immediately important than retributive justice. Nicholas Von Hoffman, reporting on the University of Wisconsin demonstration for the Washington Post, admits that 'in many instances the revolting students are saying what senior professors have said for a lifetime. Hie difference is that the older men have learned to live with these things while the younger people protest. Instead of resignation, the students march, the National Guard is called out, and the kids are accused of being impolite and The International Student Conspiracy irrational. Perhaps they are. But after 100 years of rational propriety a case can be made for giving higher education a good swift kick in the pants.' Countless reporters are expressing the same sentiment, but many of them agree with the demands while disapproving of the tactics. If higher education does need a kick in the pants then to seek punishment for those who kick first is to sidestep the issue. The demands are many and varied 'student power' is only the catch-phrase for them. What is at the center of all confrontations, though, is the need for student involvement in the total workings of the university and particularly in curriculum changes. It is no longer possible to argue that students attend a university for four years and are therefore incompetent by virtue of inexperience to determine that which directly concerns them for those four years. By the very fact that the questioning of a university's purpose has become so high-keyed and principled, the necessity of a direct student voice in university affairs is obvious. Dean Silverman derogatorily refers to the takeover of classes as an attempt by students to hold 'their own learning experiences.' The implication is that the learning experience is not theirs to hold--and this is the crux of the roblem. The University of Chicago Demands, none of which were granted, included rehiring Marlene Dixon, a greater student voice in the hiring and firing of faculty members and amnesty for all irivolved.Roosevelt University's demands include 30% student representation with full voting rights at all meetings of the academic departments and 15% student representation on the faculty senate to determine school social and academic affairs. What is evolving, therefore, through confrontation rather than dialogue is a return to the original structure of the university as a community of faculty and students totally committed to the learning process. Ideally, even the faculty is a body of 'students,' seeking an exchange of ideas on all levels and from all plitical ideologies. And if, as is the case with Marlene Dixon, a faculty member is 'radical,' advocating an 'active' rather than a 'passive' scholarship, he or she should have no difficulty being assimilated to such an atmosphere. But then money and paperwork enter upon the scene, and an administration is needed. Control is centralized and, with control, power is centralized. The problem begins to develop. In a recent issue of The Maroon of the University of Chicago, editor Roger Black remarked: 'They (Edward I^evi and the disciplinary committee) believe that the University, champion and defender of rational discourse, actually practices it. They believe that force is antithetical to rational discourse, and thus antithetical to the University The people who run the University of Chicago, starting with Edward Levi, are the veterans who managed to stay here during the lean fifties, and in that time they created in their minds the best of all possible Universities. Nat­ urally it was a University run by the faculty, founded on the principles of rational discourse with scholarship and excellence as its goals. And because they stayed, they tend to regard the University as their university, and the principles they labored to implement as the principles which run the Univerit y. Herein lies the area which must be changed--administrative and senior faculty control of all university activities. U. of C. students participating in the sit-in pinpointed the key theoretical issues of all student power demands: 'One function of universities in present day societies is to produce educated people--but not just ANY educated people, educated in some abstractly valid way. Students are intended to develop the skills and specialties and to acquire political and social orientations- -which are useful to the dominant groups, in society. This bias is guaranteed by the way nearly all universities are financed, and safeguarded by the way they are run. Effective power in the university is exercised by a small number of senior faculty, administrators, and powerful student backers. Junior faculty, students, and employees have no real power. This monopoly of power within the university parallels the monopoly of power of the dominant groups in society at large.' If this is an outline of the general issue for students, and if it is at all valid, then it is the beginning of the good, swift kick. To ignore it or quash it is a blatant contradiction for a liberal university.